Facebook she wrote

Alleged murderer Chad Khan has been on the run for two-and-a-half years. Khan is believed to have strangled his girlfriend Lauren Sleep (25) on the night of January 19 2006 in Pretoria, South Africa. She was strangled, presumably with a dishcloth, in Khan’s cottage.

Kahn has managed to evade police who believe him to be hiding in Swaziland protected by his influential family, who own a large number of properties and businesses in Swaziland.

All this yet Chad Khan’s photograph doesn’t appear on the SA Police Service website or even on Interpol. The only image of the alleged killer Khan’s face is on social networking site Facebook.

Lauren’s cousin, Christi Corns, decided to do her bit to help police track down Khan after little apparent movement on the case in the last 2 years. Christi created a group on Facebook, titled "Find murderer Chad Khan", and posted a photograph of Khan. So far 291 people have joined yet no one has come forward.

Christi hopes that that one day someone will recognize his face on facebook and come forward.

Obviously publicity is the key to any breakthrough. According to Alexa Facebook is the second most trafficked site in South Africa behind Google.co.za. With this sort of usage it’ll be interesting to see where else Facebook will impact our society in the future.